If you have the finances to either dca or lump sum at a specific date (1990), and you choose to lump sum you simply keep a 100% 0% cash allocation forever with that amount of cash. If you choose to dca you simple are doing your own glide path with cash vs stocks. You're doing nothing more complicate...

I beg to differ on the expense ratio! $40 a month IS a big deal and a $500,000 portfolio is not large enough to make $40 month insignificant. You and I just may agree to disagree on that. With my lifestyle I'll easily throw $10 away on a drink at a bar once a week. $1.35 / day does NOT add up to an...

A Target fund in the IRAs and perhaps the Three Fund Portfolio in taxable with the same overall asset allocation and tax exempt bonds. Not a bad combination. ... Did I do the math correctly here given some reasonable assumptions? Your math and logic appear reasonable. One item to consider is if at ...

With my personality, I like the plain old fashioned static balanced index fund. I'm not a fan of international and definitely not a fan of international bonds. But who knows, maybe one day, I'll take the plunge if I ever feel the need for international My personality is that as long as it has a few...

A Target fund in the IRAs and perhaps the Three Fund Portfolio in taxable with the same overall asset allocation and tax exempt bonds. Not a bad combination. Please correct my numbers or logic, but this is how I'd make the decision between a Lifestrategy/TR fund for taxable versus 3-fund with tax-e...

A "safe risk free return"? Where did you get that idea? I like the Target Retirement Funds but they are not risk free! I simply was referring to a ~2% return. A 2%/year return on $500k = $800/month You can get an essentially risk free 2.25% return with a 5 year CD at either Barclays Bank ...

The other TR funds are composed differently, with increased equity holdings as the TR number gets bigger. It is a good idea, as suggested earlier, to take a look under the hood. See what your TR fund contains. Indeed it is, but honestly I don't claim to know a better AA than vanguard, and it's as g...

For every $100k invested, the expense ratio of .18% equals $180/year. That's $15/month. By trying to use a 3 fund portfolio, where an average market balance is reasonable let to me, I may be able to drop that down to $8/month. That money is nearly a meaningless amount to me. A half million dollars i...

Few thoughts First hedge funds on average have awful returns and also typically tax inefficient, and no persistence of performance beyond randomly expected. Also they typically don't hedge much if anything. Many are just plain old loadings on factors, which can be gotten far more cheaply and with t...

Why wouldn't you invest in private equity funds directly? I also don't believe it is actually true that the blanket statement 'hedge funds invest in private equity' is accurate. In any case, these are academic questions. Being in hedge funds might be a diversifier, they may not. It is hard to tell ...

My understanding is that a lot of institutions with big amounts of money to invest (e.g., universities, public pension funds) have been very disappointed with the results of hedge funds. I think the biggest benefit of hedge funds is to those that run them. Do you have some articles or data to back ...

I was having a debate with my buddy about index investing vs. other forms of investing such as picking your own stocks or hedge funds. He was shocked that I said that if I was ultra wealthy I'd put everything into Vanguard index funds. He said that he would do 1/3 vanguard total market, 1/3 total bo...

I think that's because we value financial planning to such a high degree that we know that for one to have the best chance of financial success usually means a STEM or advanced degree in one form or another. A lot here look highly upon prudent planning from a young age such as choice of major. So f...

I think that's because we value financial planning to such a high degree that we know that for one to have the best chance of financial success usually means a STEM or advanced degree in one form or another. A lot here look highly upon prudent planning from a young age such as choice of major. So fr...

What is the defining line of your client hiring your LLC on an hourly basis for tasks y and z, when the total of those hours becomes full time and you are working exclusively for one client. That's such a personal question. As with consulting versus employment, and pretty much most financial decisi...

Wow thanks for the info. Will look at all those and possibly purchase what you suggested. Since I am self employed and my income can vary wildly every month, am I a bad or good candidate for this type of financial planning? It's the unknown swings which cause my anxiety and I feel like that actually...

I stumbled upon the lifecycle planning wiki page and it really resonated with me. It causes me a significant amount of stress being a young person at the start of his career not knowing my future income, blind to future expenses, etc. I think the idea that you simply keep a straight trajectory of ex...

I got this from Fidelity's site. Seems too good to be true. But as I read it with the 401k you can deduct the 17.5k and the 20-25% of profit from your taxable amount. If so this clearly seems to be the way to go for small business owners who are self employed. I don't see where it says SP though so...

I very much enjoyed reading the original post in this thread by assumer. Thank you for the compliment. What age gives you is life experience and perspective. The smart people who learn from their mistakes and the mistakes of others develop wisdom. You get to a point that you have been around long e...

According to my CPA you pay quarterly estimated taxes after business expenses, so net profit. In my case she tells me to set aside a third of everything net for taxes. This includes the 15.5% self employment tax which has SS in it I believe. As a SP you pay all of the SS tax but get a credit on hal...

The maximum 401k or SEP contribution is also maxed at a percent of your adjusted income. So it may not be the full 52k. Personally I have a SEP since the maximum allowable is higher. Though I have not made enough/year to hit the max yet. The SEP is very easy to start and maintain. lafder Based on t...

For the member to spend/save the after-tax money earned by the LLC, what do they have to do? Can they simply take funds from the LLC's bank account, or must they pay themselves a salary or dividend as an employee/member? If the later, is this taxed again? If they are doing single-member, pass-throu...

I'm not quite that experienced at this yet, but I just started an LLC this year as well. A few points: ⋅ If you're sure you aren't going to do an s-corp election (I'm definitely not going to do the election), then feel free to take money out of your business checking anytime you want throu...

True. Most extremely wealthy folks started a business. were involved in a successful start-up at an early stage and cashed out after the IPO, or inherited the family fortune. A few became CEO's of large corporations. However, for the vast majority of the "unwashed masses", the Boglehead p...

It's always nice to hear that our work here on the forum is both helpful and appreciated. I hope that you and the other younger members will continue our work when we're no longer around. Well not just that, but hopefully it becomes more mainstream. The ways I see that happening are: 1. The general...

I went to visit an accountant yesterday to discuss my business and its tax implications. He is a prominent, accountant and handles many large companies. During the meeting, the accountant essentially told me how impressed he was at my knowledge of taxes, investments, and the tax implications of ever...

I have a solo 401k through etrade. They allow you to take a loan against yourself for up to $50k. They make you pay yourself back 1% or something. If I take that full loan, and pay back on a regular schedule (as well as make my normal 401k contributions), I can essentially increase the amount of ta...

Yes, it is best to make the maximum contribution to your 401(k). Then find another way to make a down payment for a home. That might be difficult, but I'll try! One could borrow from the 401(k) to make a down payment, but unless one can pay off a 401(k) loan instantly, I would not recommend getting...

Hmm maybe I'm misunderstanding this. Instead of simply keeping money for a down payment in a house in a brokerage account holding BND, for example, I figured it would be better to purchase and hold BND in my solo 401k with that money. This way I would get to deduct that money from my taxable income ...

Not sure if I'm misunderstanding your question, but if you took that money out of your 401k wouldn't you also lose the potential dividends and equity increase over that same time period? Yes, traditionally one would use it for a mortgage down payment or something. So that money would presumably be ...

I have a solo 401k through etrade. They allow you to take a loan against yourself for up to $50k. They make you pay yourself back 1% or something. If I take that full loan, and pay back on a regular schedule (as well as make my normal 401k contributions), I can essentially increase the amount of tax...

It seems like the early retirement scenario involves you receiving a lot of new money in the next few years (and is not dependent on investment returns). If that happens, you can always allocate your new assets according to your new plan for your new situation. Good point. Do you have a separate em...

When you get miffed that you didn't make enough money with your investments, I think you will increase their risk level. When you get miffed that you lost too much money with your investments, I think you will decrease their risk level. At some point you will reach equilibrium for a little while an...

If you want to take a risk in the startup culture of entrepreneurship I do not think you can have any equity exposure (except perhaps in an IRA/ROTH for retirement purposes). You need cash to make that happen without stock market risk. You can't risk a stock market decline that erodes your capital ...

Does anybody else have an unknown time horizon? Typically one would say "I want to retire around 62 years old, give or take a few years" and based on that, you can come up with a reasonable risk tolerance, and therefore a reasonable AA, and reasonable savings rate to achieve your goals. I'...

Just a small contention about solo 401k's. I went with etrade since they allow for self-loans. This way I can put savings for something such as a house down payment into my solo 401k, save money on taxes, and take a loan (up to the lesser of 50% or $50k) when I want to purchase a house from myself (...

Also there's a safe harbor provision in the IRS code. What that means is that if your AGI in the previous year (before sole proprietorship) was <$150k, then you only have to pay 25% of last year's total tax burden each quarter without incurring any penalties from the IRS. If your AGI last year was >...

Remember also that your tax-advantaged retirement space is use-or-lose -- right now you can pocket 25% tax savings for your 401k contributions This is a good point to consider. Psychologically, it is kind of lame to crawl your way back to zero and realize that you're still at zero. This makes no lo...

It's a personal decision really. I agree. There may be some small mathematical advantage to one or the other, depending on the interest rates and the variance of the investment in question. But at the end of the day, in 30 years from now, I doubt it will really matter. What really matters is how li...

I'll likely get some slack for this on this particular board, but I'll say it nonetheless. I have been frugal for most of my life, but not out of desire, out of necessity. I actually have very expensive tastes. I want a huge house with nice furniture. I want to travel the world. I want to be part of...

OP did a great job of putting this together for himself. Lot of patience. I think that's close to an 'ideal' set of metrics to collect and very helpful to answer the majority of questions one might have about own personal finance. Only thing I might be inclined to include on the first chart with ti...

I want to know about the $56.41 you couldn't categorize. Hmm you made me curious. I now went through every "Misc" transaction and categorized it: Turns out it's: ⋅ -$108.34 in ATM fees ⋅ +159.05 in coins which I converted to cash ⋅ -$102.00 in "unknown&q...

I would suggest getting a software package like Quicken or mint. The ROI on your time is pretty high. I do like mint and use it to help me, but now that things are set up for me, I prefer excel. The reason is that I can do my own analysis that mint doesn't allow (such as my last batch of charts wit...

Are you aware of how much the school is paying towards your premiums ? I track every component of every pay stub, including the amount my employer pays towards benefits, and the total amount spent on group premiums for all insurance plans (medical, dental, life insurance, LTC). I find this helpful ...